Why are ships christened

As preparation, the thick glass of the bottle is sometimes prepared by carving and the ceremony before some baptisms is even practiced. In large ships, a lady prefers not to chop up a ship with red hair colour gentlemen were not wanted until the 19th century with an axe, which releases the bottle on another line to fly against the bow of the ship.

With small ships or boats, the champagne is also thrown directly to the bow on the line. Rarely the bottle is even smashed with the hand at the bow.

This brutal procedure can be very dangerous for both the Anabaptist and the ship. Even after a ship has been renamed, a new baptism must be performed. But before that there is a ceremonial farewell.

After the removal of the old ship's name from the bow, stern, lifebuoys, lifeboats etc. See under customs in wine growing a list of rituals, celebrations and curious customs "around the wine". You are using an old browser that may not function as expected. For a better, safer browsing experience, please upgrade your browser.

Download Chrome. Download Firefox. When a woman accepts the Secretary of the Navy's invitation to sponsor a new ship, she has agreed to stand as the central figure in an event with a heritage reaching backward into the dim recesses of recorded history. Just as the passage of years has witnessed momentous changes in ships, so also has the christening-launching ceremony we know today evolved from earlier practices.

Nevertheless, the tradition, meaning, and spiritual overtones remain constant. The vast size, power, and unpredictability of the sea must certainly have awed the first sailors to venture far from shore. Instinctively, they would seek divine protection for themselves and their craft from the capricious nature of wind and water. A Babylonian narrative dating from the third millennium B.

Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans called on their gods to protect seamen. The favor of the monarch of the seas--Poseidon in Greek mythology, the Roman Neptune--was often evoked. Ship launching participants in ancient Greece wreathed their heads with olive branches, drank wine to honor the gods, and poured water on the new vessel as a symbol of blessing.

Shrines were carried on board Greek and Roman ships, and this practice extended into the Middle Ages. The shrine was usually placed at the quarter-deck; on a modern United States Navy ship, the quarterdeck area still has a special ceremonial significance. Different peoples and cultures shaped the religious ceremonies surrounding a ship launching.

Jews and Christians alike customarily used wine and water as they called upon God to safeguard them at sea. Intercession of the saints and the blessing of the church were asked by Christians.

Ship launchings in the Ottoman Empire were accompanied by prayers to Allah, the sacrifice of sheep, and appropriate feasting. The Vikings are said to have offered human sacrifice to appease the angry gods of the northern seas. Chaplain Henry Teonge of Britain's Royal Navy left an interesting account of a warship launch, a "briganteen of 23 oars," by the Knights of Malta in Two fryers and an attendent went into the vessel, and kneeling down prayed halfe an houre, and layd their hands on every mast, and other places of the vessel, and sprinkled her all over with holy water.

Then they came out and hoysted a pendent to signify she was a man of war; then at once thrust her into the water.

While the liturgical aspects of ship christenings continued in Catholic countries, the Reformation seems, for a time, to have put a stop to them in Protestant Europe. By the seventeenth century, for example, English launchings were secular affairs. The christening party for the launch of the 64 gun ship-of-the-line Prince Royal in included the Prince of Wales and famed naval constructor Phineas Pett, who was master shipwright at the Woolwich yard.

Pett described the proceedings: The noble Prince. His Highness then standing upon the poop with a selected company only, besides the trumpeters, with a great deal of expression of princely joy, and with the ceremony of drinking in the standing cup, threw all the wine forwards towards the half-deck, and solemnly calling her by name of the Prince Royal , the trumpets sounding the while, with many gracious words to me, gave the standing cup into my hands. The "standing cup" was a large loving cup fashioned of precious metal.

When the ship began to slide down the ways, the presiding official took a ceremonial sip of wine from the cup, and poured the rest on the deck or over the bow. Usually the cup was thrown over the side and belonged to the lucky retriever.

As navies grew larger and launchings more frequent, economy dictated that the costly cup be caught in a net for reuse at other launchings. Late in seventeenth-century Britain, the "standing cup" ceremony was replaced by the practice of breaking a bottle across the bow.

Sponsors of English warships were customarily members of the royal family, senior naval officers, or Admiralty officials. A few civilians were invited to sponsor Royal Navy ships during the nineteenth century, and women became sponsors for the first time.

In , a religious element was returned to naval christenings by Princess Alexandra, wife of the Prince of Wales, when she introduced an Anglican choral service in the launching ceremony for battleship Alexandra. The usage continues with the singing of Psalm with its special meaning to mariners: They that go down to the sea in ships; That do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.

French ship launchings and christenings in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were accompanied by unique rites closely resembling marriage and baptismal ceremonies. A godfather for the new ship presented a god-mother with a bouquet of flowers as both said the ship's name. For some, the practice may seem like a waste of a good bottle, but a close study of history suggests that it might be a sacrifice worth making.

Don't miss a drop! Get the latest in beer, wine, and cocktail culture sent straight to your inbox. All six new ships are part of a program named after the late civil rights leader and former Georgia Rep. John Lewis. Dufty, who attended the christening ceremony, said Milk was a deeply humorous man who would've appreciated the occasion for a particular reason: Naval ships are often referred to as "she" and "her," so when the event's military speakers kept referring to the vessel named for Milk as "Milk, she" and "Milk, her," Dufty said, "I felt like I was in a gay bar and it was only nine in the morning.

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